He just kind of went of the rails on the defensive and really did come off as sort of closet racist in my opinion. I don't really care to treat Dawkins too harshly as I just think that he's kind of just reacting. His way of handling that situation, to me, was fairly disappointing.

I more or less agree with the atheist critique that the burden of proof is on whoever is making "outrageous" claims.


To return to the topic at hand, I kind of feel like the New Athiests got sort of a bad rep because of Dawkins. Dawkins is certainly a part of the movement. but not the whole movement itself. His approach to the critique of Islam is totally out of hand, but there is a critique to be made. Religious fundamentalism really is kind of terrible. I don't know that the Left has really adequately dealt with the situation either. I remember being turned off by the International Socialist Organization's support of the Muslim Brotherhood during the Egyptian Revolution. I was of the opinion that they had sort of co-opted the protests. Most of the Left adopts oddly apologetic positions concerning Islam. I think that to seriously consider what does the most good for people in the region means to be willing to be critical of the faith, as it is oppressive. It's all just a matter of how you handle things. A person in the West should seek to alleviate the plights incurred in the region by the West. The focus, therefore, shouldn't necessarily be upon the faith at all. What is oppressive about Islam will ultimately need to be taken into consideration, however.

That was kind of a ramble into this nebulous territory that I honestly haven't quite figured out how to navigate. In so far that Dawkins is the movement, perhaps it should be abandoned, but I do kind of think that it might be worthwhile to salvage it. Perhaps they're just wrong, and you just shouldn't be anti-religious, but I kind of think that there really is a critique to made of religion in general. Religions are kind of like state-sponsored cults. I do kind of think that, while they don't necessarily need to be railed against, people should abandon them.

Well, you could always write. It's not usually the most fortuitious career path, but I think that there could be a real demand for more philosopher authors. There's that, or, like, putting out a podcast or something. You kind of have to invent whatever it is that you do that brings in money if you don't want to become a professor.

responsible for everything, you are effectively responsible for nothing — StreetlightX

I like this idea. Although, I wonder if it doesn't have negative consequences. If the overdetermination of responsibility renders the concept meaningless, then the possibility of an ethic becomes somewhat incredible. How are we to cope with that an ethic can not be meaningfully set forward?

I think again of social media performers - or anyone, really - who get called out for saying the wrong thing by hundreds and thousands of anonymous netizens: how does one respond in a way commensurate to that? — StreetlightX

The concept becomes even further distorted as work becomes blurred into daily life. Social media now requires a maitenance of social capital. People are no longer engaged in a project of free expression, but have rather consigned to maintain the appearance of free expression. Everyone is expected to be an idiosyncratic individual, and, yet, no one is really free to engage in the development of an authentic (to borrow a Heideggerian term that I don't fully agree with) Self.

I had a gig as a dishwasher at a vegan café a few years back where I was sort of expected to cultivate a personality as a young hip bohemian along with my regular duties at work. I found for the experience to be somewhat absurd. I am somewhat of a beatnik, but I didn't want to wear my good band T-shirts while washing the dishes because I didn't want to get them soiled. It only seemed to make sense to me to wear whatever I picked up from Goodwill to work since it was just going to get splashed. The pressure to maintain boho chic airs was unnecessarily stress inducing. The whole experience of working in that place was rather anomic. It was supposed to be a left-wing Liberal vegan café, but the first thing that my manager told me upon hiring me was that, "I have hired a lot of people, and I have fired a lot of people." and that he was also a lawyer. He was basically suggesting that he could fire me at will. He was from L.A. and, so, maybe such conduct is somehow more tolerable there. Strangely enough, I did actually cultivate a personality as an artist centered around washing the dishes. I wrote a deconstructed conceptual noise album centered around a theory that I developed that the dishwasher is the Abstract Machine. Whoever washes the dishes controls the flow of the entire establishment. They are always washed correctly. What the dishwasher actually does is to alleviate the stress of work by creating a rhythm with which to allow for a kind of meditation while at work. Dishwashers are the last line of defence between ubiquitous false consciousness and the natural desire to live and work as one pleases. Real subsumption in the service industry is only impossible because the dishes will just simply need to be washed. Because the rhythm that one generates while washing the dishes well is invariably preferable to any other way of working, a good dishwasher will always wage some form of informal strike when management demands that the back of house works at a pace that is out of sync with the rhythm. The necessity of having a dishwasher is actually what, in part, prevents post-Fordist Capital from becoming Fascist. There is no way around that the dishes will need to washed and that a rhythm will be found.

With respect to responsibility, one can say something similar is occurring: we are held ever more accountable to the form of responsibility without being held accountable for any one thing in particular. With work coinciding with performance and control being ever more absolutized, there is no longer any space of 'non-control' in relation to which responsibility becomes intelligible. Hence a kind of diffusion of responsibility which makes us both absolutely responsible, while at the same time emptying responsibility of any content. — StreetlightX

I liked what you had to say about this as well. I've read a lot of Agamben, but don't quite understand enough of it yet to really put forth a response. The legal situation that he describes seems, to me, to necessitate that live is lived as a form of strike in a somewhat negative sense. You have to wage a living strike in order to maintain that you are not subject to a form of Law without content in order to prevent that your 'right' to exist does not get called into question as an exceptional case. It's sort of like a version of The Trial where Josef K is a political radical.

As this applies to responsibility, I think that the "Che voui?" of Lacanian Psychoanalysis expresses the feeling that this invokes. The diffusion of responsibility paradoxically results in anxiety. Perhaps a positive ethic could be invoked from that there are no longer concrete terms with which to understand responsibility, but I don't know that you would argue that one should be.

You can go on from any one of those points if you care to. I'm reasonably well read, but self-taught and, so, only have so much of a grasp on anything. I am curious as to what you have to say, though.

Edit: I later decided that the dishwasher just an abstract machine and not The Abstract Machine, but since I haven't officially released that album really I think that I'm just going to change that without telling anyone aside from you people here at The Philosophy Forum.

the Ground of All... I like that.

Vark Vikernes is the notorious Neo-völkisch pagan who was arrested for the attempted bombing of The Blitz House, tried for the arson of four churches and the murder of his fellow bandmate, and imprisoned for 15 years in Norway. His infamy popularized Neo-völkisch movements. He wrote a book called Vargsmål which outlines his ideas. Wild Hunt doesn't appear to have anything to do with Neo-völkisch movements, however.

The betterment of the leechers does better to advance my cause. I am therefore in favor of that they leech. The people who primarily "leech" off of the State are either marginalized or listless left-wingers. I, myself am a listless left-winger, and don't really care that people are taking a "free ride". However the plights incurred via Empire can be alleviated is best. Because I see the current manifestation of the American State as being ultimately negative, that you can take a "free ride" means that you should. There's nothing wrong with it in my opinion.

I don't think that an Anarchist can not be a Socialist. Anarchism derives from Socialism. I have stated that I think that Anarchism can more or less be defined as libertarian Socialism. I use libertarian as a qualifier to denote that I think that whatever society there is that emerges should strive to be as liberal as possible. I do not think that this necessarily results in lessez faire economics. I do think that libertarianism and egalitarianism are compatible. You could say that I am a "left-libertarian", but I choose to identify myself as an "Anarchist". I don't actually believe in political parties at all. I think that they're all sort of rackets or cults. I sort of agree with Jacques Camatte and Simone Weil. The Democratic Socialists of America is seriously, like, the only political party that I actually like. I don't even agree with them. The Democratic Socialists of America are a libertarian socialist organization. I am a libertarian Socialist who identifies as being an Anarchist. That minute detail may not seem to matter, but it would ultimately matter. To become a member of the Democratic Socialists of America would be an unwarranted act of entryism on my part. I can only express solidarity with them.

I don't, like some Anarchists do, demand that Anarchists only associate with other Anarchists. I think that doing so is somewhat coercive. I agree with some sort of concept proceeding from mutual aid. A person can associate with whomever they please, even, in some rare cases, certain Fascists. It's unlikely that a person could ever be meaningful engaged with either the far-Right or the authoritarian Left, but such circumstances are not entirely impossible. I am, however an anti-Fascist and emphatically opposed to Soviet apologetics. You could say that I am also anti-totalitarian, but I am not anti-Communist.

I have a very particular political inclination that could be seen as an emergent sect. I don't necessarily mind this, but my intention is not to inanely act alone. I do hold such a position in sincerity. I think that it is in keeping with some sort of Anarchism without adjectives.

That's true enough, but I ultimately suspect for Law not to be a neutral category. It's seemingly neutral, but ultimately disadvantageous to what I would consider to be good. Law is a repressive apparatus. In spite of its best intentions, its function is to enact a form of repression. The whole "It is forbidden to forbid" sort of thing. I guess I see this as a means to explore that. An easy deconstruction of a High Fantasy novel would be to write the Paladin as a character who wants to bring divine justice to pagans and heretics. I'm not quite giving the genre enough credit, though. The hero in the myth kind is beset by this tension. I don't know. I was honestly just reviving this thread to see what other people would post. I, for some reason, rather like these quizzes. I've spent a lot of time on select smart finding out which Final Fantasy character I am. The last time I did it I got Aerith Gainsbourg, Setzer Gabbiani, and Vincent Valentine. But, alas, I've gone off topic again. Who knows what I trying to get at?

I've played D&D before. I was just tossing that theory out there. When you consider Good and Evil in the Christian sense historically, I think it becomes much more difficult to consider for Law to actually be good. This is just something that I think about from time to time.

Like, a Paladin is like a Knight of the Templar. I've always kind of liked that sort of thing, but must admit that there is something kind of Fascist about the Knights of the Templar. They were active during the Crusades.

Eh, perhaps. I never got too into Fantasy novels. I had a friend who was really into them and said that about High Fantasy. There's a way of interpreting orcs as being like a slave rebellion or something. I prefer to see things better and see them as just simply being warlike, but I did just assume that he knew what he was talking about.

Oh, I edited my post to clarify what I meant, by the way.

High Fantasy describes a genre of Fantasy writing. It actually just denotes that the story is set in an entirely different universe, but its usage sort of connotes a kind of implicit romantic nationalism or something. I don't actually mind Lord of the Rings because it's about the Second World War, but there are a few High Fantasy works that can kind of be interpreted as being almost imperial. I wouldn't knock the genre too much, but those sort of things are sort of there.

If you, for instance, take Lord of the Rings and place Great Britain in a different historical context, then the text becomes much more difficult to interpret positively.

Either Neutral Good, Lawful Neutral, or Lawful Evil. You can't be Lawful Good in High Fantasy.

What I particularly mean by left-wing is Anarcho-Pacifism. I'm a libertarian Socialist and a Pacifist. I think that it's generally okay to define Anarchism as libertarian Socialism. Not all Anarchists agree with this. I adhere to a sort of Anarchism without adjectives. I have been influenced by Autonomism and Communization. I'm not a Communist as I don't necessarily agree with Marx, but I don't really mind libertarian Communists or have too many qualms with Marx.

My fellow man will gain the wisdom that I have gained in so far that I am capable of articulating it.

I don't actually really leech off of the state all that much as I live at home, but I don't really see anything wrong with doing so. The State is responsible for so much strife in the world. It's fine to take what you can from it.

I have a theory about the D&D Character Alignment that there is not Lawful Good. There is only Neutral Good and Chaotic Good.

Everyone is capable of a lot of things, but some people are more advantaged than others. I'm just trying to figure out how to leech off of the State until I can sustain myself as a left-wing philosopher.

Oh, they can choose whatever they want to. I'm just saying that it does still seem to be the case that the Republican Party doesn't have all that much to offer people of color. I'm also quite skeptical of "economic development" in "opportunity zones". That sounds a lot like gentrification.

But @RobertMetz, you must know that while ingratiating minorities is not as good as actually satisfying minorities, meeting the diversity quota is better than not meeting it. Having there be actual black people who support the Democratic Party is better than having there be, like, a black person who supports the Republican Party.

Yes and no. There are plenty of reasons not to vote. That's not really what I mean by active disengagement, though. I don't really care who votes or doesn't vote. The electorate are right to retain a certain degree of ignorance. Nothing is really all that meaningfully engaging. I don't think that people should concede anything that this is valid out of some sort of percieved practicality. You can choose to be of any position that you like. If it is a good position then it shouldn't be sacrificed to that you can make marginal gains by conceding certain things. I think that people should vote in general. I'm not terribly enthusiastic about it. I think that it's just sort of a minimal democratic offering. Some people choose not to vote out of protest. That effects some change as well. I don't really agree with Anarchist lines against voting, however. You shouldn't not be allowed to vote. That's not too common of an Anarchist position, but it is common enough to be of note.

I think that you might assume too much by assuming that the American Right is just simply ignorant. A lot of them know all too well precisely what it is that they are voting for. It's more of a problem with the American mindset then it is with the dissemination of information. Almost everyone has access to Wikipedia. The problem is more psychological. Who knows what can be done about that?

I don't see any reason why civic engagement should be compulsory. Not everyone cares to invest their time in politics.

I guess I don't quite know what you mean. I assume that that's a bit of a rhetorical question. Am I not aware of the importance of voting? I don't know. I only think that it's so important.

I am very comfortable with that the Democratic Party will have to continue to pander to me. I will only exploit this so much, however.

Voting isn't everything that has everything to do with politics. I am comfortable with voting for the Democratic Socialists of America because, if they put forth a candidate, it will be the first time that I can cast a vote in good faith. If no one decides to be sincere then nothing will change.

Sort of. The parties have changed over the years, but there's little left of the abolitionist past of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party is just usually preferable. They're not really all that great. It's just a general inclination. I would vote for the Left Party or Feminist Initiative if I lived in Sweden. I am partisan.

I may consider voting for a decent Libertarian candidate if they were against war, in favor of some sort of environmental intitiatives, and of some sort of socially liberal persuasion.

I generally suspect that the only good that will come of politics will come from the Left in spite of that I don't really like the Left all that much. I am of the far-Left. It's all rather tennuous, but I won't be shifting positions any time soon.

Edit: To better answer your question, currently the Democratic Party can more or less be considered to be always preferable to the Republican Party in spite of that they really aren't all that great. This has not always historically been the case.

I would prefer a multi-party system, or some other democratic process, but would still probably have qualms with those things. I'm in favor of participatory democracy, whatever that means.

What is being informed? It's just a compulsive addiction to a 24-hour news cycle. A person's capacity to witness a slow train wreck does not correlate to their capacity to change the world for the better. I live in PA and didn't vote in protest of the cult behavior exhibited by the Democratic Party leading up to the election. I would have voted for Hilary or Sanders given the chance to. I partially lost the election for the Democratic Party. This places me in a unique position. I am now who the Democratic Party panders to. I have decided to exploit this. I am going to vote party line in the local elections of 2019, but will vote for the Democratic Socialists of America's candidate in 2020. If they don't put forth a candidate, then I will vote Green. I already registered Green in protest of that the Democratic Party routinely turns into a cult every two years or so. My vote is in good faith as I do believe that political parties should be more like the Democratic Socialists of America, but I do have an ulterior motive. I am voting as such, in part, because the Democratic Party will consider for that to be a vote that they lost. I know that the Democratic Socialists of America have no chance of winning the election. I also know that the Green Party has no chance of winning the election. I want for the Democratic Party to consider why they have lost a vote. Perhaps this will change the world for the better. I only care so much either way.

I am suggesting that that Trump is in office is evidence of that the system can not be meaningfully reformed in so far that such things are allowed. To radically, that is to say, meaningfully, reform the American state, you would still need to actively disengage from politics as such. Everyone needs to wage a personal strike.

It's always been like this, it's just never been so emphatically obvious. The manner in which it is obvious is banal. All that I have to take at Trump are what will be percieved as cheap shots. The situation is already reduced to the absurd. I think that people should actively disengage from such a state of affairs, but that is just my personal opinion. Any argument levelled at the current manifestation of the American Right will necessarily be an appeal. In order not to concede, the only thing that a person can do is to actively disengage.

By engaging in debate, you concede to their terms. Their terms are that such a presidency is legitimate. I'm not contesting that Trump won the election. I simply contest that his presidency can at all be considered to be what "legitimate" connotes.

Well, I'm 29. Like I said, I'm just lazy.

I don't really think that it's a joke, though. Nothing is falling apart. It's tragic to experience the Trump presidency as American democracy falling apart, but his presidency only reveals what has already been going on. I just wish that it was more poetic. I would have assumed that it would have taken someone who was more charismatic to reveal to the world what the lofty democratic project was actually like. Don't get me wrong, what is lofty of the democratic project is laudable. Trump certainly poses a threat in so far that he bastardizes the concept of democracy which should be held as a somewhat inviolable ideal, but that he does so is just simply a continuation of politics as such. Empire has always treated the concept in such a manner.

I am actually older than 25. I'm just sort of lazy with my posts. Most people fall out of Anarchism in their 20s because it's kind of tough rap that doesn't really reward you with very much. Being at all idealistic is often equated with being naive which I find to be rather distasteful.

I don't wish that Trump was more sinister, I just wish that he was more interesting.

No. I'm not defending Trump, I'm just lamenting upon how boring this whole thing is. Trump is like the pushy foreman from a Hollywood film made by people who were later brought before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He's just kind of stubborn and agressive. There's not a lot to the guy. I wish that there was something more to analyze.

Can you really imagine that Trump could effectively deliver Satan's lines from Paradise Lost? Give me someone like that. This is all just too tiresome for me to at all pay attention to.

It's always been like this. There was Bush, there was Nixon. I'm an anarchist, and, so, I don't really care about the foundations of the country, but they've always been hypocritical. What I mean, though, is that Trump is like a stock supervillian. The Right needs to pull out like an Archaeofuturist or something to get people really engaged. Megalomania can be so fascinating, but Trump is so dull. I don't want for my political plight to be dull.

You make it sound like a bad thing.

What I mean, though, is that it really is boring. You already know what to expect from the Right. It's just a lot of the same tire old platitudes and thought terminating clichés. The only thing that catches anyone by suprise is that they are somehow successful. Scandals have become somewhat routine. Everything is as if it's all so terribly normal because it's all just too much like what it actually is. You get Trump. You analyze him a bit and then you get bored. He's a megalomaniacal businessman. There isn't anything much more to it than that. It's almost like a dystopian novel written by a Nihilist. It's all just sort of coase, dull, and unpleasant. Your haranguing middle manager is really like the President of the United States of America. It doesn't really go any deeper than that. I want for the next closet despot to come out of the American Right to be charismatic and Existentially unsettling. At least give me something interesting to think about.

I'm not satisfied with the Trump presidency. It's so banal. I need to be engaged at the level of absurdity. Maybe The Apprentice isn't quite the right format. But, why shouldn't Trump turn his next term into a reality television show? I'm not saying that he'll get elected, but, if he gets elected, then he should do that. I would probably actually watch that show with commercials, and I really don't watch television at all.

Yes. Trump is just some guy who needed to buy and live on his own island.


Yes, but can you imagine if there was an actual season of The Apprentice that was set in The White House? The tweets aren't quite enough. He needs to go full cinéma vérité with it.

It'd be like a resort. There'd be no reason to leave. You just have to let people like that spend enough money for it to be worthwhile for the inhabitants of an island to ceaselessly pander to them.

Why does he need an electrified perimiter? Let Trump swim. He could eaten by a shark or something. My theory is just that if you let megalomaniacs live on their own islands in peace then that you really just won't need to worry about them anymore.

A better question, I think, would be can we get Trump to do another season of The Apprentice while he is in office?

He should be bannished to AM talk radio on the man-made island Perfidious Iowa. We can divert the border wall funding to the building of the island. My solution to what to do with people like Trump is always just to let them live on their own island.

I read A Grammar of the Multitude a while ago and remember thinking that it was pretty good. When the World Becomes Flesh is great, but I really didn't understand it.

I don't quite see how labor conditions under post-Fodist Capital dissolve responsibility. You're actually held to more of a standard. Even a dishwasher has to be some sort of artist. The pressure to perform is inane. Responsibility becomes distorted under post-Fordist Capital so as to be equated with service as an art form.


The plausability of this is somewhat unsettling. I'm not sure how I feel about being in a commune directed by a Neo-Aristotlean, even a Leftist one.

Beyond that, "not good" is not the same as "bad." — T Clark

I like this idea. I once thought of creating a Philosophical framework where nothing was considered to be "bad" or "evil" and everything that was either "bad" or "evil" was just simply "not good". It may have been a worthwhile endeavor, but I did sort of give up on it.

There's Secular Humanism. I was in the Secular Humanists way back when I went to college for the first time around. It was pretty alright.

I think that however you reduce particles only exist in relation to other particles. The whatever it is that is there is only there by that it exists in relation to whatever else there is that is there. I don't think that anything can exist by itself. An existents existence is in relation to other existents.

Edit: Existence is the relationship. Everything is energy. That atomic existents interact is how they exist.